Sunday, February 26, 2017

A Tribute to Mildred Dresselhaus:

Note to readers: The URL title of this post was intended to be "A Tribute to Mildred Dresselhaus." In attempting to add the YouTube video of the Super Bowl ad, my control over the title has somehow been overridden. Although the right title appears in the post, the URL is not the same. I am not sure whether to blame YouTube or the blog host, but given that this is a tribute in memory of her, I feel the original title of the video is inappropriate, and just wanted readers to be aware that this was not my choice.

A Pioneer on Many Fronts

Sadly, this is one of two posts this week on the
deaths of two icons of the technical community, and of my professional career--Harold Denton, who was
the face of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) at the time of Three
Mile Island (TMI), and Mildred Dresselhaus, an MIT professor who did
pioneering work in the field of nanotubes, and so much more. Both have
achieved a kind of "rock star" status during the course of their
careers.

When I heard the news about Mildred Dresselhaus' death
early this week, I was doubly sad. First, I had known her for a long
time, and I knew about her work and her accomplishments. But second,
she had been slated to speak to the Washington, DC area alumni/ae on
March 9, and I had been looking forward to attending and to seeing her
again. My
earliest encounter with Mildred Dresselhaus, or "Millie," as we all knew
her, was in the early days of my freshman year at MIT. This was at a
time when there were very few women in science or engineering, so it
probably makes her the first female scientist I met. She had a great
interest in helping and mentoring the small number of women at MIT, and
had come to our dorm to talk to us about careers--and about combining
careers and a personal life. This is a subject that still gets
attention today.

Even
then, her energy and devotion to both her work and her family were
clear. The fact that, as a young professor, she took the time from her
work to help mentor us was telling. This was a time when mentoring was
not as common, and did not help a junior professor in advancing through
the ranks. In fact, as she said repeatedly throughout her career, she
took only a day or two off for the birth of each of her children, which
was undoubtedly a reaction to the fact that, in those days, her career
would have been doomed had she taken much more time off. In fact,
although I haven't seen it reported in the obituaries, I recall her
telling us that, when her babysitter was unavailable, she took her
babies to work with her at the MIT Magnet Lab.

After
I left MIT, I didn't see much of Millie for many years, although I
periodically heard about some of her many achievements. (Since these
are detailed in the obituary, I won't repeat them here.) But to my
delight, our paths crossed again while I was at the Department of Energy
(DOE), as my tenure there overlapped with her appointment as head of
the DOE Office of Science. We were in different offices, so our paths
didn't cross every day, but our offices had some common interests, and I
was able to meet with her a number of times and to get to work with her
as a professional.

Following
that, our paths crossed less often, although I met her several times at
conferences of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
(AAAS). Therefore, I had been very excited when I saw that, even in her
mid-80s, she was scheduled to come to Washington, DC, and I was looking
forward to hearing her speak and to seeing her once more.

It is particularly bittersweet that her death comes just as she assumed real "rock star" status, with the General Electric ad at the last Super Bowl
designed to encourage women to study science and engineering, and having been dubbed the "Queen of Carbon" for her nanotube work. My only
consolation is that she will live on in all she has done in her career,
both in her technical work and in her support and assistance to so many
women in their careers. ***

2 comments:

So much of what we know about carbon, we owe to Miss Dresselhaus. She inspired so many young scientists, especially women, throughout her career, and her legacy will do the same. I came across some awesome Carbon Slogans and sayings to honor her memory, take a look.

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About Me

Dr. Gail H. Marcus is an independent consultant on nuclear power technology and policy. She previously worked as Deputy Director-General of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) in Paris; Principal Deputy Director of the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology; in various positions at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC); and as Assistant Chief of the Science Policy Research Division at the Congressional Research Service (1980-1985). Dr. Marcus spent a year in Japan as Visiting Professor in the Research Laboratory for Nuclear Reactors, Tokyo Institute of Technology, and five months at Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry. Dr. Marcus has served as President of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) and as Chair of the Engineering Section of AAAS. She also served on the National Research Council Committee on the Future Needs of Nuclear Engineering Education. She is a Fellow of the ANS and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dr. Marcus has an S.B. and S.M. in Physics, and an Sc.D. in Nuclear Engineering from MIT. She is the first woman to earn a doctorate in nuclear engineering in the United States.